E-filing in India, a long way to go [IP in India]

The government’s ambitious project to encourage electronic filing of patent and trademark applications has received an embarrassingly poor response in its first year. Of the 35,000 patent applications filed last year, only 410 (1.17%) were filed online. Worse, only 0.24% or 242 of the one lakh trademark applications during 2007-08 were filed online.

The facility for filing of patent and trademark applications from anywhere in the world at any time through the Internet, was launched in July 2007 to help the Indian Patent and Trade Mark Offices function as paperless offices. Government officials termed the poor show as “teething troubles” and blamed it on ignorance and reluctance on the part of Companies and individuals to use the new system.

To correct the situation, the government had asked patent officers and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to provide training to patent attorneys, through a programme conducted in the four metros. Consequently, in the two months of the current financial year, online applications for patents and trademarks have improved marginally. Online applications constituted 4.9% of the 6,000 patent applications filed so far in this financial year while it also constituted 1.34% of the 20,000 trademark applications.

Currently, there are only about a dozen countries that have e-filing facilities, with India recently becoming a member of this elite group which consists of countries like USA , Japan , South Korea, China and the European Patent Office. With patent applications from China outstripping those from India by leaps and bounds, the Centre has launched a national awareness, sensitisation and consultancy programme by roping in universities, laboratories, state level chambers of commerce and industry, patent attorneys and the scientific community.

The proactive campaign which involves an outlay of Rs 20 crore, would establish a correlation between intellectual property, innovation, productivity and competitiveness. The objective of the programme was to take the intellectual property regime to the bottom of the industrial pyramid and invigorate the proprietary rights culture in the country. An effective online filing system can prove to be the lynchpin for this strategy’s success.

The benefits of e-filing of patent and trademark applications include getting an application number immediately, on-line verification assuring error-free filing and obtaining the filing date, a speedy registration process, being able to save the date locally in the applicant’s personal computer, printing the completed application data and recalling the contact details for subsequent applications. This would have meant savings on paper, valuable time and money.

Payments can be made through the Payment Gateway of authorised bankers, which would save time and money and also put an end to the hassles involved in visiting and filing the applications in the offices. NIC has developed modules for e-filing and on-line processing with State Bank of India providing the payment gateway.

But patent lawyers said though the e-filing system is a major improvement over the previous one, it also hasits own limitations.

Incidentally, the government is working towards sending more officials to be trained by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, UNIDO, as well as Japanese and US patent offices. Several vacant posts of patent examinees also need to be filled up.

To enhance the prestige of the Indian Patent Office (IPO) and to attract work from abroad, the government is also in the process of transforming IPO into an International Search Authority and an International Preliminary Examining Authority under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Currently, there are only 12 such authorities.

Besides, India would soon join the Madrid Protocol on Trade Marks. Madrid Protocol is a simple and cost-effective system for registration of International Trademarks. India’s membership of the Madrid Protocol will aid Indian Companies in registering their trademarks in other member countries of the Protocol through a single application.

FICCI advocates 'knowledge centres' [India]

Industry body Ficci today said knowledge and education centres should be set up in patent offices across the country to educate the public with the role of Intellectual Property in emerging economies. The centres could house exhibition areas, besides making available literature on Intellectual Property to create awareness about protection and enforcement of IP, according to a Ficci release.

Ficci and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) have constituted a Consultative Working Group to make the Indian Patent Office more responsive to industry. In recommendations made to DIPP, Ficci said users who file patent applications electronically should be incentivised by reducing their filing fee. Transactions of records across patent offices also need to be expedited, it said.

As a result of deliberations of the consultative group, a separate wing in Mumbai Patent Office has been set up for data analysis. The data include records on technical fields by year of filings, number of patents granted to a company in each sector, list of companies filing patents, pending applications and country-wise patents in force. The patent office has also made online the abstracts of patent applications as well as copies of patents granted and decisions of the controllers, enabling third parties to check legal status of the patent application, the chamber said.

India plans intellectual property campaign

In its drive to catch up with China in the field of patents and trademarks, India will shortly launch a national awareness, sensitisation and consultancy programme by roping in universities, laboratories, state-level chambers of commerce and industry, patent attorneys and the scientific community.

According to sources in the commerce ministry: "The cost of this awareness campaign has been pegged at Rs 20 crore. This will establish a correlation between intellectual property, innovation, productivity and competitiveness. The campaign is aimed at promoting intellectual property and boost the proprietory rights culture in the country." According to the figures of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), of the total 1.56-lakh applications for international patents it received, China came seventh with 5,456 applications. US topped the list with 52,280 applications, followed by Japan with 27,731. Compared to this, India’s applications were a paltry 686. In 2006, when China filed 3,951 applications, India filed just 831. The Indian Patent Office granted a record 15,262 patents during 2007-08, the government said, more than double the 7,539 granted the previous year (2006-07) and nearly eight times more than the 1,911 patents granted three years ago, in 2004-05.

Historically, the total number of patent filings by residents of India is just three per million population, against a world average of 250. According to the patent office figures, the number of patents granted in 2007-08, the first year of India’s 11th Five Year Plan, compares well with the total number awarded during the entire period of the 10th Five Year Plan, which was just 17,618. "The application for international petnts should go up substantially to cope up with other countries of the world. We have taken some initiative, but more needs to be done," said the commerce ministry sources. Incidentally, the government has spent more than Rs 140 crore in the first phase of the modernisation effort, which included setting up integrated intellectual-property offices in four major cities and launching electronic filing of applications.

Another Rs 400 crore is to be spent to establish a Trade Marks Registry and Intellectual Property Archives and allied activities. The government has also begun work on a National Institute of Intellectual Property Management to handle training, education, research and think-tank functions in intellectual-property rights.

Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure [India]

The "Draft Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure, India" [Third Edition, February 25, 2008] is now available on-line.